Art & Fear:
Observations on the Perils and Rewards of Artmaking
by David Bayles and Ted Orland
2001
ISBN-10: 0961454733
ISBN-13: 978-0961454739
From the Book's Introduction:  "This is a book about making art. Ordinary art. Ordinary art means something like: all art not made by Mozart. After all, art is rarely made by Mozart-like people; essentially-statistically speaking-there aren't any people like that. Geniuses get made once-a-century or so, yet good art gets made all the time, so to equate the making of art with the workings of genius removes this intimately human activity to a strangely unreachable and unknowable place. For all practical purposes making art can be examined in great detail without ever getting entangled in the very remote problems of genius."

Letters to a Young Poet
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Originally published 1934; in 2002 by Dover Publications
ISBN-10: 0486422453
ISBN-13: 978-0486422459
From Amazon.com:  "It would take a deeply cynical heart not to fall in love with Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet. At the end of this millennium, his slender book holds everything a student of the century could want: the unedited thoughts of (arguably) the most important European poet of the modern age. Rilke wrote these 10 sweepingly emotional letters in 1903, addressing a former student of one of his own teachers. The recipient was wise enough to omit his own inquiries from the finished product, which means that we get a marvelously undiluted dose of Rilkean aesthetics and exhortation.

The poet prefaced each letter with an evocative notation of the city in which he wrote, including Paris, Rome, and the outskirts of Pisa. Yet he spends most of the time encouraging the student in his own work, delivering a sublime, one-on-one equivalent of the modern writing workshop:

Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense might come from outside." (Jennifer Buckendorff)

A Man Without a Country
by Kurt Vonnegut
2007 (Paperback)
ISBN-10: 081297736X
ISBN-13: 978-0812977363

In a volume that is penetrating, introspective, incisive, and laugh-out-loud funny, one of the great men of letters of this age–or any age–holds forth on life, art, sex, politics, and the state of America’s soul. From his coming of age in America, to his formative war experiences, to his life as an artist, this is Vonnegut doing what he does best: Being himself. Whimsically illustrated by the author, A Man Without a Country is intimate, tender, and brimming with the scope of Kurt Vonnegut’s passions.

“For all those who have lived with Vonnegut in their imaginations . . . this is what he is like in person.”
–USA Today
 

My Name is Asher Lev
by Chaim Potok
Originally published 1972; in 2003 by Anchor Publishing
ISBN-10: 1400031044
ISBN-13: 978-1400031047
From Wikipedia.com:  "Lev struggles with his family and the people of his Hasidic sect for the right and freedom to use his great gifts as a drawing and painting artist, against the tendency of his people to view art as a waste of time, or worse--as a manifestation of the "sitra achra" (the "Other Side", the realm of the demonic). His father is an international worker for the spreading of orthodox Judaism among Jews and political advisor to the Rebbe, the spiritual leader of the sect; he travels the world in an effort to unite and bring hope to disparate Jewish communities around the world, including aiding Jews in Russia suffering under the persecution of Stalin. As a result of the vastly different paths he and his father take and of the effect his art has on his family and people, Asher is forced to confront the implications of his gifts as an artist."
 

The Reenchantment of Art
by Suzi Gablik
Originally published 1992; in 1995 by Thames & Hudson
ISBN-10: 0500276897
ISBN-13: 978-0500276891
From barnesandnoble.com:  "Suzi Gablik's last book, Has Modernism Failed?, won an astounding number of readers with its passionate yet merciless description of an enervated contemporary art scene that seemed to be without purpose or moral authority. In The Reenchantment of Art, Gablik confronts again the effects of modernism on our society, and proposes a remedy based on a redefinition of our art and culture.

As Gablik describes it: "The psychic and social structures in which we live have become too profoundly anti-ecological, unhealthy and destructive" to indulge the modernist sense of alienation and social antipathy. Gablik's solution for transforming personal vision into social responsibility involves new cultural imperatives, that include a renewed sense of community, an enlarged ecological perspective, and greater access to the mythic and archetypal underpinnings of spiritual renewal.

The Reenchantment of Art introduces a number of exciting new artists offering fresh approaches to making meaningful art. It is a book that will challenge and inspire any reader who cares about the future of art."